Making the most of the Asus eee battery


The Asus eee is a fantastic useful portable device. It is easily carried in a small bag or satchel. It has full operating system and comes with several options for USB and SSD card storage, Wifi and camera (on some options) and is affordable (starting at a about £200 GB). However its battery life for those on the go with no access to a power source can be a problem.

The eee handbook gives some good advice for extending the battery life. These include:

  • Turning off Wifi
  • Dimming the screen
  • Turning off the volume

However what if you want to use Wifi? It is a feature of the device and a very useful one! Well here are my revised tips to help make the most of the battery life of the eee but to also give you connectivity when needed:

  • Turn on Wifi only when needed. If you are writing a Blog post or email use a text editor like the Open Office Word processor to prepare your document. It means it can be easily stored to the local hard drive (a very useful back-up) whilst being worked and spell checked etc. Then when you are ready to post it is time to connect and either upload (if your blogging or email tool allows you to do that) or simply copy and paste. Once complete log out and disconnect again unless you are going on to do some further browsing.
  • Only run applications when you need to. On the Asus in the right corner is a little green square called SOS. When you click on it it brings up a task manager like interface (like the MS Windows one) kill off the processes you are not using. When you finish using an application don’t leave it running. The reason this saves battery life is because it puts less demand on the CPU in the laptop. The CPU are the ‘brains’ of the machine and the harder it has to work to more it drains your battery.

The most you will get out of a standard battery on the Asus eee is about 3.5 hours. If you use Wifi and puts lots of demand on the CPU (the brains) you will have less time but if thats what you need to do then the tips above will hopefully help you get a bit more out of it. I’ve been able to get close to 3 hours + and still use Wifi by using the tips above.

 

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